A blog by University of Sheffield students studying on the MA for Food Security and Food Justice

Fast food is killing us slowly.

As a student, to be honest, I prefer to eat in fast food restaurant rather than at home. Most of friends around me have the same choice. However, in this way, fast food could affect our health easily. So, I am going to talk about this phenomenon in this article and try to raise students’ awareness of fast food.

With all the reports of how unhealthy fast food is, why is anybody still eating it? For many students, fast food has become a trend which is convenient, cheap and tasty. At present, students tend to have a complex and busy study schedule. The majority of them intend to save as much time as possible because they have to deal with their numerous paper works within limited time. They do not have sufficient time to cook or prepare their food and more likely to eat in the restaurant. Fast food is easily available, convenient, needs little or no preparation, and is usually consumed on the go. Just what students are looking for! Therefore, the fast food choice emerges spontaneously and has become a default choice for students. There is no doubt that fast food can be easily obtained at numerous fast food restaurants where the food can be severed quickly. Students could save a great deal of time to focus on their work which could be more efficient. A large number of students take advantage of it in their daily lives. Also, compared with other foods, usually the majority of students could afford fast food as the price of these meals is comparatively low. They can just cost a few pounds to get an inordinate unhealthy meal from the fast food restaurant. In addition, most of fast food restaurant close students’ accommodation or university. Therefore, it is considerably convenient for students who look forward to purchase fast food.

On the other hand, no one can deny that advertisement is one of the prime factors which influence students’ perspectives of fast food. A number of fast food restaurant offer special meals which cater primarily to students. For example, when I walk around on the West Street, there are many billboards and posters which introduce the special items of KFC. Generally, I just cannot help but purchase these meals for lunch. These appealing advertisings always show the delicious items with discount price which could attract students easily. It can be seen that appealing advertisement plays an important role in attracting students to purchase fast food and refusing them to access healthy and nutritional food. As well, students are more likely to consume more time and money on fast foods than elderly people. Fast food affect students often worse than adults, as most of the commercials aimed young people as their primary targets because of their spending power, their purchasing influence, as well as being potential future consumers. This is a relatively vulnerable time for students who are seeing more media and making more decisions on their own. Besides, students could be influenced by their peers or classmates. Today, students are more likely to socialize with each other or hang out at the fast food restaurant such as Subway, McDonald’s as well as KFC. These places are very relaxed with fluffy armchairs or sofa along with internet access.

The fact that fast food is unhealthy is probably not a huge shock. But what exactly is it about fast food that makes it so bad for us? When first fast food restaurant started to appear, people where fascinated and happy with what they obtained; but afterwards various health problems started to manifest themselves. In terms of fast food, it contains a large amount of calories from sugar, carbohydrates and fat. One fast food meal can contain as much as 1500 calories, which is over 50% of the average daily calories required for a healthy adult. Within these calories people would find unhealthy fat, food additives and little to no vitamin content. Despite its high caloric content fast food offers very little nutritional value in return. Furthermore, fast food often process with hydrogenated oils, trans-fats, monosodium glutamate and food additives in order to enhance the taste. Basically, students are less likely to perceive these issues of meal which probably impact on their health when eating at fast food restaurant. It is obvious that higher intake of calorie could lead to a number of chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes mellitus and obesity. Obesity has become a most frequent public health issue in many nations especially in developed countries such as United Kingdom and United States. Obesity is related to several chronic disease including stroke, heart disease, diabetes, arthritis and joint disorders. Students are unable to perceive these illnesses in a short time. So, they pay less attention to their daily diet and purchase high calorie fast food regularly. While eating fast food every once in a while would not impact on students’ health, but consuming it regularly would relatively affect their health.

In my opinion, I think government should introduce laws to restrict fast food industries. For instance, laws should require fast food restaurant offering the meal which need to contain fruits or vegetables and include beverages without excessive fat or sugar. And the caloric content of the meal should lower than 1000 calories. Also, many people gained weight and became obese due to high caloric content in the fast food. But even now, when people are aware of this problem, they choose to behave in the wrong way and fall into the same trap again and again. This because their limited awareness of the caloric content. Therefore, laws should require fast food restaurant to print caloric content on menus. This could help individual know the calorie more directly. Overall, it is not easy to eat a healthy meal at fast food restaurant. But there are some fast food restaurants offer the healthy side dishes and beverages options for the meals. It could be useful depending on consumer actually attempt to order it. So, it is important to consumer who should know the risk and make a wise choice for themselves

3 thoughts on “Fast food is killing us slowly.”

It is well known that fast food is unhealthy, especially for children. However, there are still a lot of people like to eat it because of many reasons, such as taste, convenient and low price. Therefore, how to improve the quality of fast food has become a serious problem. This blog provides some effective suggestions.

I think it is difficult for customers to change their behaviours. As you said, whatever obesity, heart diseases, is a long term effect, so most people pay less attention to this, especially young people. This problem has to be tackled by laws. Fast food advertisements should be regulated strictly. And governments should protect children in priority, advertisement posters around school should be banned. I remember there were lots of Pepsi advertisements around my high school, especially during the period of the World Cup in 2010…

I agree with this blog, as I said in my previous blog too this fast pace society is letting believe that we do not have to eat proper meals so we go for the fastest option which is fast food and sometimes we do not realize of the big mistake and the damage for our health.